Makeover the interactive visualisation of inter- and intra-zonal public bus flows using Tableau. Critics and suggestions are provided before reworking on the visualisation.
The original visualization is created using the following two datasets with the aim to reveal inter- and intra-zonal public bus flows at the planning sub-zone level of January 2022.
Link to original visualisation
Long filter list for subzones: Long list of subzones is shown at the side whereby users have to scroll slowly and find the specific subzone. Perhaps a dropdown filter with the search function can be use to make it more user friend for the readers.Given the filters are at the right of the adjacency matrix, it might be misleading to the readers who may initially think that the filters are meant for all the charts. The position of the filter could be placed closer to the charts which it is working on.
Overlapping subzones for the adjacency matrix: Subzones are purely sorted by alphabetical order and the names of the subzones overlap on top of one another. Furthermore, there are no filter available to zoom into a particular origin/destination subzone. Hence it is extremely difficult for the readers to find a specific subzone or generate insights. Users are not able to view the adjacency metrics clearly given the large number of subzones and limited space give. I would suggest to place adjacency martrix in separate dashboard to provide ample space to show more content and, at the same time, adding in extra filters to enable readers to zoom into the flow by subzones.
3 Limited interaction between charts: By clicking on charts (eg the bar for the weekday trip count), it does not highlight or filter in other charts to allow users to connect between the chars. I would suggest to include more dashboard action to allow users to connect the different charts by incorporating more interactivity.
The initial proposed design is shown below:
1.Clearer title and headers: Clearer headers and axis labels will be added to help user to understand the content at one glance.The time period of Jan 2022 will be added to the title for greater clarity.
2.Added Map for comparisons across subzone: The initial histogram only allows us to compare the number of trips across time for 1 particular subzone. Maps for both trips for both origin subzones and destination subzones are added to allow user to compare the total trips across the different subzones. Filters on weekend/weekday and hours of the day to allow users to see to observe the changes in value when parameters changes.
1.Combined charts for better layout: The weekend and weekday histogram on number of trip for a origin/destination are combined into one chart leveraging side-by-side bar for easier comparison of trend between weekday and weekend; and also save space for other visualizations in the same dashboard to enable the users to generate more insights.
2.Interactivity: Dashboard actions are added.
3.Interactive icon will be added to tab 2 to explain the content: This to explain the objective of the heatmaps and provide greater clarity of how the values are created.
You may find the proposed visualisation on Tableau Public here.
2.Drag in the “Time per Hour” and “Day Type” to columns and “Total Trips” to rows. Drag “Origin subzone” and “Day Type” to filter.
4.Hide the x-axis on weekday and weekend by right clicking on the x-axis and untick the “show header”. This is to prevent cluttering as there are already legend to label it.
5.Rename “Hour Per Time” as “Time of the Day (Hour)” for easier interpretation.
7. Right click on the tab and duplicate the tab. Change the filter from “Origin Subzone” to “Destination Subzone”. Change the Subzone N to the one that is connecting to Destination Subzone.Edit the title to reflect the new “Subzone N”.
8.In the data source tab, create two new calculated fields such that they shows the trip only when it is weekday and weekend respectively. Refer to the picture below fo the formula.
10. Create a new sheet to build the adjacency matrix for weekdays.
Insert the destination region, planning area and subzone to columns and the orign region, planning area and subzone to rows. The different level of location categories are added to allow users to zoom into information at region and planning area level and group the subzones by the region and planning areas in heat map for clearer visualisation. Add in the filters as per the picture below
Drag the “Weekday Trip%byOriginZone” calculated in Step 9 into color and filter. This will allow user to filter by the value too.
16.Use the horizontal and vertical objects to create layout as per the dotted line shown below.
Remove the title of the maps as grey bar already segmented the two areas by origin and destination subzones.
Apply the Day Type filter to all the charts in this dashboard as per shown in the picture below. Repeat the same step to apply the Time of the Day (Hour) filter to both of the maps in the dashboard only.
The entire dashboard only shows 2 heatmaps to allow user to see more detail.
Region, Planning Area and Subzone filters are added for both origin and destination. Apply these filters to both heatmap charts in this dashboard similar to step 18.
Filtering of the values are added below each heatmap.
Double clicking on the axis will allow user to zoom into the specific region, planning area or subzone.
1. Tampines East has the highest number of trips starting from the subzone and ending in the subzone, in line with the population trend. From the maps, we have observe that compare to other subzones, Tampines East has the highest inflow and outflow of the bus trip. To further investigate the reason, I have visualised the total population by subzone using Singstat’s latest SG resident by planning area/subzone data,,released on June 2021as reference. The chart below illustrates that Tampines East subzone is the subzone in SG with higher number of population. Hence, the number of bus trip to and fro is also the highest to cater for the demand due to high population.
Additionally when we look at the distribution of to and fro bus trip across time of the day using Tampines East as both origin and destination, we can observe that number of trips remains high for both morning and even peak hours. This could be because nearly half of bus trips of Tampines are servicing within its own subzone, ~43% on weekdays. Hence, the number of trip is high for both to and fro the subzone during peak hours to bring residents from home to mrt stations/schools and back from mrt stations/schools to home.
2. Industrial area in west (Boon Lay, Pioneer, Tuas) has >80% of trips traveling to Jurong West Central, Joo Koon, Tuas Bay. For the industrial areas in far west of SG, there are likely very limited number of different bus services numbers to other parts of SG due to the distance. Joo Koon and Tuas Bay are where the mrt stations (Joo Koon, Tuas West Road, Tuas Crescent) are located. Hence, bus servicing from pioneer and tuas industrial areas to Joo Koon and Tuas Bay are likely transporting workers to the nearest mrt. While Jurong West is the nearest residential zone near these industrial areas. Many of people working in Boon Lay could be residing in Jurong West.
3. Lim Chu Kang has very different trend vs other subzones.
On weekdays, the number of trips to Lim Chu Kang peaks as early as 6am - 8am, while the number of trips traveling out from Lim Chu Kang reaches its highest from 3pm - 7pm. As Lim Chu Kang is the subzone whereby many farms are located, the number of trips trends on weekday likely coincides with the start and end of the working hours for the farm workers.
On weekends and public holidays, we observed that the number of trips travelling to Lim Chu Kang from 10am - 4pm exceeds the number during same period on weekdays. The various farms in Lim Chu Kang such as vegetable farms and goat farms likely attract families with young children to visit. Hence, the number of trips to Lim Chu Kang during late morning and early afternoon is higher on weekends than weekdays to cater for such demand.